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Grandma Thomson's White Pudding

A sausage made from beef suet, flour, salt, and pepper, stuffed into beef skins and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Grandma Thomson's White Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Shave down the beef suet.

  2. Rub the suet into fine particles, removing tough parts.

  3. Mix the suet with the flour.

  4. Season the mixture highly with pepper and salt.

Stuff and boil

  1. Stuff the mixture loosely into cleaned beef skins, about half a yard long.

  2. Secure the ends of the skins.

  3. Prick the stuffed skins every 2-3 inches with a needle.

  4. Boil the stuffed skins in a kettle of cold water for 3 hours.

  5. Let the boiled skins cool.

Dry and store

  1. Hang the cooled skins in a cool place to dry.

  2. Tie the skins in a clean cotton bag.

  3. Store the bag in a dry, cool area.

Serve

  1. When ready to use, cut off the desired amount.

  2. Boil the cut portion in hot water until heated through.

  3. Remove and place before the fire to dry off and crisp.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Provides fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Binds the suet and bulks the filling so it holds together when sliced.

The step that matters

Prick the stuffed skins every 2-3 inches. Pricking lets steam and air escape during boiling, so the skins do not swell and burst while the filling cooks.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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